Bought an Earthquake mini-tiller at farm store today. Only $169 and looks pretty rugged. Like a Mantis, but made in China, Suprise! Commany is from Wisconsin, but not made here. Started right up and did good, nice and fine. Is a little 2-stroke 43 cc. Has on-off switch on it, but didn't work to shut off. Tried to reach in with tools to cross the wires to kill and didn't work. Pulled one wire off and still not stopping. Choke, kept running! Finally pulled spark wire off. That little guy has quite a zolt! Arms and body actually ached awhile after the shocking. Have to look at it later or add a metal clip to short out like old Briggs engines used to have to short out. Here's a picture of it.

Nice little tiller for flower beds and hard to get at areas. It's probably just a bad connection somewhere. I had a old Briggs 7hp (1974)on a McCulloch generator with a permanent magnet rotor. For shutoff it had one of those metal clips, so it would be running at 3600 with that big magnet acting as a flywheel. It would take 20 seconds at least to come to a stop and all that time it's pulling in fuel. I started shutting the gas off to shut it down instead. I was always wary of getting a shock off that clip when I went to shut it down.

You'll enjoy having a light and easy to handle tiller .I feel it was one of the best tools for reclaiming the garden from overtaking weeds after being gone for a weeks vacation . It works great mixing compost leaves ect. in raised beds. Good luck finding uses for it , Al

I have one of the old old Wizard Mini tillers. I think mini tillers are under rated and use mine to bust up the soil in my small garden spot before planting. I have to go slow, but it works the soil just fine down to about 7" or so and weights roughly 20 lbs. Great little pieces of equipment.

I have a Murry brand and I use it to make trenches in the yard. Two years ago I ran electricity to the chicken coop, and used the mini tiller to cut a trench 10" deep for the conduit.

Couldn't do that here! You'd need a pickaxe and a pry bar to dig any 10" deep trench here. We have so much rock here you can hardly get a shovel in the ground. I have a small tiller but it's not quite a mini. It's a 1981 MTD Till it 3hp. It's only 16" wide and has a B and S engine. The handle folds down so you can put it in the back of a hatchback or wagon. It does the job but it's slow. I'd like to have a GT powered tiller at some point but I think there will always be a need for a small machine as well.

I bought one this spring out of Home Depot. I believe it is a Power-Bilt. Worked pretty well the hour or so I used it. Seems to do a much better job pulling it backwards rather than pushing it forward though.